Singer Jill Barber picks up a little something sweet at East Village Bakery in Vancouver. Barber will perform with Royal Wood on June 24 at the Vogue...more

Singer Jill Barber picks up a little something sweet at East Village Bakery in Vancouver. Barber will perform with Royal Wood on June 24 at the Vogue Theatre with Royal Wood as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

Photograph by Jenelle Schneider, SUN

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Singer Jill Barber picks up a little something sweet at East Village Bakery in Vancouver. Barber will perform with Royal Wood on June 24 at the Vogue...more

Singer Jill Barber picks up a little something sweet at East Village Bakery in Vancouver. Barber will perform with Royal Wood on June 24 at the Vogue Theatre with Royal Wood as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

Photograph by Jenelle Schneider, SUN

Photo 3/4

Singer Jill Barber picks up a little something sweet at East Village Bakery in Vancouver. Barber will perform with Royal Wood on June 24 at the Vogue...more

Singer Jill Barber picks up a little something sweet at East Village Bakery in Vancouver. Barber will perform with Royal Wood on June 24 at the Vogue Theatre with Royal Wood as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

Photograph by Jenelle Schneider, SUN

Photo 4/4

Singer Jill Barber picks up a little something sweet at East Village Bakery in Vancouver. Barber will perform with Royal Wood on June 24 at the Vogue...more

Singer Jill Barber picks up a little something sweet at East Village Bakery in Vancouver. Barber will perform with Royal Wood on June 24 at the Vogue Theatre with Royal Wood as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

If Jill Barber never gets to duet with Michael Bublé, maybe their kids can at least be best buds.

Born just days apart in August 2013, Barber’s son Joshua and Bublé’s son Noah probably have a lot in common.

Both were born in Vancouver, both are the sons of Juno-nominated singers, and both have cool biblical names.

Both are also fast becoming frequent flyers.

“He’s been on 27 flights already. I don’t know about that Bublé baby, though,” Barber said with a laugh during a recent phone interview.

“I feel like I could tell pretty early on that he was going to be a pretty good fit for me,” Barber added about her 10-month-old son. “I felt like he would go along with the program. He’s a great touring baby. He’s really good with people.”

As Joshua babbled away in the background, Barber explained how having a baby made her feel like she had something to prove, and that it was important for her not to let her 10-year career fall by the wayside.

Therefore, Barber could not be more excited for what she calls her “first real hometown show.”

Barber, 34, said: “I’ve been living here now in Vancouver for six years,” and added: “I’ve had a baby here, my family is here, we have a home here. I mean, I’ve played shows here, but this is the one that feels like a hometown show officially.

“I’m so pleased the jazz fest is having me back because I had such a great time two years ago. And it’s at the Vogue, which is this super awesome theatre. I love it. I love that I get to play an old Vancouver ‘neon sign’ venue.”

The Vogue seems especially fitting for an artist like Barber: It boasts a historical cachet that is distinctly West Coast, and its velvety walls and art deco styling match a mood that Barber seems to so effortlessly sing.

Perhaps even more effortlessly than usual on her sixth album Fool’s Gold, released this week, an album that finds Barber showcasing every facet of her singing career so far.

Hints of Edith Piaf abound, thanks to Barber’s distinctly light and brassy voice, something we heard on her French album Chansons (2013), as well as classic splashes of Doris Day and Etta James-styled soul, cabaret and old school jazz, which were peppered over albums like Mischievous Moon (2011) and Chances (2008).

The album also dabbles in country (thanks to a superb Steve Dawson collaboration entitled The Careless One), fiddles with Motown (the stompy Broken For Good) and plays James Bond-esque mood swings with To The Last, all watery guitars and lush string arrangements.

“I love drama,” Barber said with a laugh. “I play with it a little bit. I really have to give the credit to the guys in my band. We all walk a line together of playing with music and creating drama and wondering, ‘Is it too much?’ James Bond has come up before in our musical progression for sure. I like the idea of thinking of music as a soundtrack.”

Born in Ontario, Jill Barber spent the better part of her early singing career in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Originally a folk-pop-inflected singer, Barber took a turn for the jazzier side of the spectrum around 2008, and showcased her vocal jazz skills with Chances, an album that was longlisted for the Polaris Music Prize.

Barber has since gone on to win a number of awards, including being named the 2012 Sirius XM Jazz Artist of the Year, and landing the 2013 Western Canadian Francophone Album of the Year for Chansons. In all, she has been nominated for more than 30 awards, including two Junos.

When asked if she feels Fool’s Gold is her best portrait to date, the new mom married to CBC Radio 3’s Grant Lawrence said she simply worries less now than she may have before.

“I’m more confident releasing records now than I used to be,” Barber said. “It’s not going to make or break my career. It’s not the be-all, end-all. It’s just the next chapter in a body of work I’m contributing to. I feel like, in my career, it’s been both a blessing and a curse that I never really fit neatly into one genre.

“Am I a jazz artist? I don’t know. I mean, I’m playing the jazz festival and I really feel so grateful I’m invited to that party. And I’ve always loved country music, but I’m not a country artist, although those influences are there on the record.”

Barber’s level of confidence is what makes Fool’s Gold shine.

Recorded with longtime collaborators Drew Jurecka and Les Cooper, Fool’s Gold finds Barber in top vocal form, and her delivery sounds more natural and more relaxed than before.

That assessment surprised Barber, but it’s also something that made sense to her considering Fool’s Gold was recorded mostly remotely, from home while taking care of Joshua, in a very spontaneous way. The end result can easily lend itself both to moody musings or cocktail partying.

“The lyric ‘fool’s gold’ came from a song that did not make the record,” Barber explained. “But it seemed to work thematically: This idea that I feel like I am — as a writer and as an artist — constantly panning for gold.

“Every time I write a song, I’m trying to write the greatest song I’ve ever written. I’m trying to strike gold. Songs don’t make it onto my records unless I have that tingly kind of feeling. Whether or not it translates to actual gold records, at least it looks like gold, it shines like gold — it makes me feel like it’s something precious.”